


For Every Sunrise is a Gift

by Saraste



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Acceptance, Domestic, F/F, Femslash, Femslash Exchange 2016, Gen, Mourning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-24 00:43:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8349565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: In the wake of Buffy's death, Willow mourns the sister she lost and Tara is there to remind her of the value of what Buffy paid for: a world not in hell.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [basketofnovas (slashmarks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/gifts).



> Hello, recipient! I went with a mix of what you wrote that you'd like to read in your Dear Author letter. So Willow, with the aid of Tara, coming to grips with life after Buffy's death + slice of life and domesticity with and attempt at food-porn. 
> 
> My muse was so cranky and unco-operative when I was writing this. (Didn't remember Willow being this hard to write?) I wanted to have their first Christmas in this yet didn't have the time to write it. (Because working life and Life[tm] are notorious time sucks...) I think I'll write it as an extra later in time for the holiday with all the delish food porn you can shake your wooden spoon at, or something. 
> 
> Hope this one still brings you joy!

The dust settles and the world is saved. Again. The world is a messed up place when you need a plural for 'apocalypse'. One has been thwarted once again, in any case, yet this time… all linguistic humor falls flat, for the price exerted this time.

 

As they look at Buffy's still body the price paid for a world still there the same as it was yesterday feels all too high. She doesn't even look dead, just sleeping, as she lies on the ground amidst rubble. Like she isn't broken. But Willow _knows_. She feels the ache of the loss deep in her heart. She clings to Tara, for Tara is still there, _her_ Tara. A Tara who remembers. A Tara who weeps with her. A Tara who will see the path she'd want to take and will sway her from it, for a sacrifice like this should not be tarnished by messing with forces beyond comprehension.

 

*

 

They lay Buffy to rest, together, doing her that last favor.

 

Willow doesn't know what she would do without Tara by her side. Tara knows the horror of death, of losing someone you could not thought how you could live without.

 

And then there is Dawn. Motherless. And now without her sister. Shocked and bereft in the wake of Buffy's death and the truth of her own origin. She is but a little girl lost, now more than ever, and Willow feels it her duty to take care of her. However much she wants to just curl up together with Tara and shut out the world, mourn together.

 

They all gather at the Buffy's house, after, sharing a meal and memories now bittersweet, memories which will hurt less in time. Willow remembers the last meal they shared together in that dining room, when it all felt normal, their kind of normal at least, when Ms. Summers was still… Everyone had been so happy then. And now, now… The house echoes of memories, she feels like she would see Buffy come around the corner at any moment. Willow wonders how Buffy did it, living in this house with Dawn, didn't her mother's memory haunt her?

 

All of them sleep there, come evening. Willow, tip-toeing downstairs for a glass of water, somewhere around 3 am, covers Giles with a quilt. Picking up his empty glass from the floor. He doesn't stir. She partly wishes that he would. So they could talk.

 

She goes up, curls next to Tara in a bed which isn't theirs yet but will be, but arms which _are_ , and cries herself to sleep as Tara hums to her a soothing lullaby.

 

*

 

Giles, bereft and made old by loss, leaves for England,  eventually .  Their goodbyes are not dry-eyed. Willow sees even Xander wipe off a tear.  Somehow, they had thought, all of them, that Giles would stay, even with… For the world may be saved bu there's still a Hellmouth. Looking at his face, though, it's clear why he can't. 

 

B ecause Buffy was more than just the Slayer to him, like she was to them all.

 

*

 

Tara and Willow settle into hesitant domesticity at 1630 Revello Drive with Dawn.

 

Slowly, Willow settles into life with Tara, an everyday existence of the like she doesn't feel like they have had together. Tara is her rock, taking cared of her as Willow took care of her, when Glory had scrambled Tara's poor brain, making her so much less.

 

*

 

Willow loves waking up next to Tara. Mornings are best, the best of times, a new day in which all can go right. A fresh start with a fresh morning that still comes. All the better to wake next to the person she loves. Who is _alive, alive, alive_.

 

More meaningful than ever, now.

 

Tara is within her reach, warm and herself, _knowing_ who Willow _is._ And who they are to one another. And she understands. She might not understand every subtle nuance of who Buffy was to Willow, what their friendship had meant to her, but Tara understands all the same.

 

Mornings are more often than not lazy, long affairs, both of them up with the sun, just to have time for a snuggle before breakfast. Skin on skin, heartbeat to a heartbeat. It's a new morning, they're alive. They have to make it a good day, to ever hope to repay the cost of every sunny morning, every day in which the world isn't hell on earth.

 

Breakfast is done together with soft small smiles exchanged between the two of them, though the smiles are lacking for the first few weeks, slow to return.

 

Some mornings it's just the two of them, her and Tara in a kitchen which still feels a little empty sometimes even when they're three.

 

… because they should be four. Were the world just, they should be five and Willow and Tara just visiting.

 

Buffy is the sister Willow didn't have and now she doesn't have her any longer. Some mornings Willow cries into her breakfast of choice. Often cereal, those first weeks, when it feels so easy to wallow in mourning. To take the easy route with sustenance. Cereal- Orange juice. Coffee.

 

Eventually, she finds that losing herself into the process of breakfast cooking gives her mornings structure, gives her idle hands something to do and her mind a moment's respite from the thoughts of 'what would Buffy say, seeing me now, not wanting to bring her back, not even trying?'.

Pancakes often come in funny shapes, intentionally and unintentionally. The kitty-pancakes bring out Tara's smile. Her and Tara often cook together and Willow feels hollow whenever it's her alone cooking dinner in what used to be Joyce's domain. Buffy's death brings her mother's absence to clearer focus, somehow, because their lives were such a mess in the time following that and when Buffy…

 

*

 

A few weeks in, when Willow thinks of rent, she turns to Tara, spatula in hand.

 

“We're living here, aren't we?”

 

Tara looks up, coffee can in one hand, a measuring spoon in the other. “Aren't we?”

 

Willow smiles, her face feeling strange, as spontaneous smiles are still a bit unfamiliar to her features. “We are.” She pours batter onto the skillet in the shape of a feline head. Her eyes smile. She feels, if not purely happy, then content. Pure happiness is still to come, as are the all the other range of emotions that are muted now.

 

The bright smile Tara gives her, getting her kitty pancakes soothes Willow's sorrow.

 

*

 

Mornings are eventually easier, Willow crying less often. Dawn looks lost, still, knowing what she is, what was born from, yet at the same time remembering a life which technically… didn't happen. It's all just altered memories, she's barely over a year old as anything but pure energy. Yet Willow can't look at her and not known but she can't remember her life without Dawn in it, either.

 

Dawn's easier with Tara, whose memories were less altered. Even if Tara also remembers having seen Dawn as the Key, so bright and brilliant, incandescent and pure.

 

But they're none of them exactly mundane in the former Summer's household, so that matters less and less with each passing day.

 

And Dawn _is_ real. She's alive now. She isn't pure energy. She's irascible flesh, her teenaged angst too often Willow's headache and nothing to do with her made-up past and all to do with her living breathing teen self. It feels real enough to ache. Dawn _is_ the surviving Summer's sister and Willow has taken Buffy's role upon herself. Giving Dawn structure, stability, a sense of normalcy.

 

It keeps them all together.

 

Willow and Tara still go to school, work, live. Fight evil on occasion. Mourn.

 

Life is… life is life. With all mundane crises like bills and essays coupled with news of a new Slayer being summoned, flitting back to even Sunnydale through the supernatural grapevine. It's a sort of closure, hearing about it. To Willow, it's the taking away of her last scrap of hope that Buffy might come back, which she had hid well in her heart.

 

That night, they lie curled in what is now their bed, their bedroom, their house in all but legal ownership, and Willow lets her tears come, sobbing against Tara's shoulder.

 

“I wish...” she gasps wetly as Tara strokes her back with gentle calming hands.

 

“I know.”

 

“But I could. I know I could,” she's oddly insistent, as the ache is still fresh, she's still fighting, thinks too often of bending the rules, not thinking of the consequences.

 

“You could,” Tara agrees, sadness in her words, “but you shouldn't. The world isn't supposed to work that way even if you could.”

 

“ _But she's gone_.”

 

“She was human even if she was the Slayer.”

 

“Wish she hadn't been.”

 

Tara kisses her brow, her hot teary cheeks and her lips, hands warm around her. “I know.”

 

*

 

Eventually, Willow accepts what she cannot change, that it is not her task to bend the fabric of reality, bend it to her will and break rules to bring Buffy back. Her life _is_ good. She loves and is loved. And… she has to think that Buffy is at rest. That Buffy knew what she was doing. It is not for her to undermine it.

 

*

In time, the house becomes a home again. Tara lives there with Willow, and they watch Dawn grow. They bake and cook and clean, enjoy the tomorrow they got. They are family.

 

 

*

 

The world turns. The world lives. And they never forget the price paid.


End file.
